Confessions of a Motion Picture Press Agent

This is the second of a series of three articles dealing with the inner side of the motion picture industry, by the author of "A Theatrical Press Agent's Confession and Apology." The first of these articles was published in The Independent of August 24.

I was now to be initiated into the workings of a great film concern, the kind which greets you with its offerings on fixed days of each week at your favorite picture theater, and causes you to wonder at the nature of the personalities behind it. Much of what I shall describe is not typical, but the modes of distribution and the relations of stars to the parent company have a general application.

The Montezuma Film Corporation, having been founded on the fame of its producing directors, capitalized that fame by selling stock. This new enterprize had hired me as press agent and sent me at my request on a trip to the West Coast studios before the opening of the New York press campaign. The president of the company (hereinafter known as Brutus) was about the busiest man alive; as a marshal of financial phalanxes and battalions he had no superior. On returning to New York I knew from his expression of countenance that my Los Angeles flying trip had been a strategic error.

"You got us into a peck of trouble by your hasty going away," remarked Brutus.

"How is that?"

"You gave my broker an article, which he had printed in the Wall Street papers, to the effect that Montezuma Film was a fine 'buy' and we heartily recommended it to investors. Didn't you remember I had just inserted a page advertisement in the dailies advising the investing public NOT to buy our stock?"

Alas! too true. In my hurry of leaving for the Western Eldorado, and eagerness to please the good-natured broker, I had completely forgotten about the wily boss' deep-laid scheme of creating a demand for our pieces of engraved paper by warning the public away from them.

"A daily journal," continued the president, "saw your press notice and my ad, and started an investigation. The publisher called here with what purported to be my previous business record, including an outrageous allegation that I had wrecked a life insurance company down South, and threatened an expose of Montezuma methods. It took the best efforts of my lawyer and an unusually fat space-contract to call him off. I see," added the president disapprovingly, "that I must put a publicity manager over your department to guard against such mistakes in future."

"Grandiose ideas of production ruled everybody." This scene is from a later picture and shows fighting on the "Pyramid Temple."

But nevertheless and despite my ill-timed praise, Montezuma stock continued to sell like lots in an Oklahoma land boom, and we all buckled down to making ready for our New York opening under the supervision of Brutus's publicity manager, the latter being known as the Healer from his propensity for mental science. The president had taken a Broadway theater under a yearly rental of $85,000. The problem-in-council was how to start operations. Finally the suggestion of Catiline, a clever ad writer who had the executive's ear, was adopted.

"The way to do it," he urged, "is to sell your best movie seats at three dollars. Fix up the theater like an aristocratic villa, put in loges and tea rooms for the Fifth Avenue set, station beautiful girls as ushers, and add philharmonic concerts led by a great conductor. Create the atmosphere, my dear sir, create the atmosphere. Fifth Avenue will lead, and the hoi-polloi will follow!"

This advice suited the president exactly. He had mixt much with the rich in his stock operations, and he had visions of a picture palace more "exclusive" than any legitimate theater, with himself as the swallow-tailed host welcoming the votaries of fashion and chuckling over the vast crowds of the trailing populace. Much cash was spent in altering the theater, invitations were issued to the Four Hundred, and the box office was opened to the vulgar. The newspapers grasped at the novelty and printed our announcements at length. We were all very hopeful.

On the afternoon of the opening I had a presentiment that things were not right, which strengthened to a certainty when I looked at the full racks of noncomplimentary seats and learned that the entire week's advance sales amounted to only $96.75! As night drew on, none of fashion's votaries loomed up in the offing.

Where were they? Some one suggested that "Society" does not show up until 8:30 or nine o'clock. We waited patiently. The crowd of pass-holders now began to make their appearance, intermingled with an occasional purchaser. There were few carriages, possibly two dozen couples in evening dress, the others all in street clothes. By nine o'clock it had dawned on the most obtuse that the Four Hundred had stayed away but had sent its cooks, grooms, waiting maids and butlers! 

"Elaborately built structures were fired and shipping was blown up to provide a 200 foot 'flash' in a 5000 foot picture."

Brutus stuck it out for months to constantly diminishing receipts which at the end scarcely paid the weekly rent. Then in disgust he turned the management of the theater over to a Broadway personage who is fond of styling himself the "Go-Git’Em-Guy." The latter cut the prices to twenty-five and fifty cents, camouflaged the lobby, decorated the stage, trimmed the pictures, and introduced warblers of popular ditties. These innovations set the business soaring, and the remainder of the season was on at least a partly self-supporting basis.

The happenings recorded above would have proved a tragedy to a theatrical showman who must necessarily create an immediate demand for his goods or close up shop. With the large film corporation, however, the New York opening is "window dressing." Success or non-success of its rented Broadway theater is after all a minor matter compared to the national and worldwide distribution of its films. Armed with the sincere laudations given to our weekly output by the metropolitan critics, we address ourselves to the country at large. Sales branches were established in all the important cities, contracts were entered into with thousands of little and big picture houses, and from Oshkosh to San Antonio and from Bangor to Aberdeen signs like this were emblazoned on their fronts:

As the innumerable contracts rolled in, each accompanied by a request for a regular supply of photographs and press matter, I entered on a wholesale publicity distribution that put in the shade all my previous efforts. The press department was now a sweatshop in which all hands feverishly penned, typewrote and assembled a vast product of words. Our press sheets were printed in five thousand lots, and our current stock of 25,000 photographs was weekly drawn upon for shipments to the four quarters of the compass. We entered into correspondence with London, Paris, Rome, Calcutta, Tokio, Buenos Aires, Melbourne and other remote centers. We handled anything from selling a star's photo to an individual motion picture fan to landing a whole page of Montezuma publicity in the Cleveland Leader or the New Orleans Item.

With the approach of New Year's the first black clouds appeared on the horizon. An omen of this was when the telephone company cut off our service, sending the president hurrying downtown for cash to meet a bill. Trade editors greeted me with doubtful welcome, declaring the "ad" bills long overdue and stating their disinclination on to pasture a "dead one" with free pubicity. Next, a tidal wave of economy struck the office. Heads were lopped off in every direction, private telephoning was forbidden, vouchers were scrutinized, and expenditure was curtailed. Gossip was rife in the street that we would soon go bankrupt. Nevertheless Brutus got another firm of very powerful Wall Street magnates interested, and we continued to plod on.

How came Montezuma so near to wreckage after only five months of operation? Sales were tremendous; the films were displacing those of older concerns everywhere. The first reason was the staggering expense conducting twenty-eight separate branch distributing businesses in as many cities, together with the home office "overhead." A second reason, equally important, was the contract entered into with the studio producers by which we paid them at the rate of $40,000 for every long picture and $20,000 for each short one- about $6,000,000 per annum. The highly famed directors had named their own figure, and it was breaking Montezuma's back. Grandiose ideas of production ruled everybody. A sub-director would be getting $25,000 a year, and even featured players would receive a moiety of that amount. The most expensive locations were rented, yachts and railroad trains were chartered, free automobiles were for everybody, elaborate built structures were fired and shipping was blown up to provide a 200-foot flash in a 5000-foot picture.

Restaurants were built inside of studios and cabaret entertainments of enormous cost were given to the "patrons," who ate real food and drank vintage wines.

I shall not bother the reader with the detailed after-history of Montezuma in its stock market ups and downs, its quarrels with the directors, and its kaleidoscopic changes of management. A year and a half later it was bruited about that the parent corporation owed one of the studio producers $800,000 and another one $600,000. The huge returns they had counted on simply weren't in the business, and they were obliged to get out. Went too, all the high-priced stars, the fancy-salaried home officials, and the whole blind system of production waste. The Montezuma makes cheap pictures now; the financiers in charge would shy at a famous stellar name as they would at the Kaiser's.

As to the "old gang," most of them are widely scattered. The directors-general found a rival corporation willing to pay them big prices for their work, tho under reduced scale of production and with fewer companies. The Healer has returned his healing, Catiline to his advertising desk, and Brutus busies himself with a production company, while the "Go-Get-Em Guy" has built theaters, established an exhibitors' circuit, and is reputed to draw a princely salary as an adviser-in-chief to a prominent film maker. Long since I became an independent scribbler.

The gigantic, rapidly shifting and (if I may so call it) mushroom character of film enterprize is illustrated by the brief history I have been recounting. As a highly speculative and hazardous game, it far outclasses the old-line theater with the latter's solid foundation of theater syndicates and proprietorship. Nobody can corner the 8,000 picture theaters of the United States, just as nobody can corner producing talent; and so I think that the future the films will ever present new and unsuspected angles to the fascinated observer.

"Confessions of a Motion Picture Press Agent," The Independent, December 7, 1918, pages 326, 344, 345.

© 1999, David Pierce, on editing and revisions (if any)

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